Nature Reuses LEVELED BOOK R and Recycles

Visit www.readinga-z.com for thousands of books and materials.

WritingCreate a Venn diagram comparing how people reuse and recycle with how nature reuses and recycles. Share your ideas with a partner.ArtFind a discarded item and turn it into a piece of art. Present your artwork to your class and explain the process you went through to turn the trash into art.

Connections

Nature Reuses and Recycles

A Reading A–Z Level R Leveled BookWord Count: 898

www.readinga-z.com

LEVELED BOOK • R

Written by Mol ly Wetterschneider

www.readinga-z.com

How does nature reuse and recycle?

Focus Question

Written by Molly Wetterschneider

Page 3: Hyenas are skilled hunters, but also famous scavengers. They can smell a dead animal from 4 kilometers (more than two miles) away.

Photo Credits:Front cover: © Steve Gettle/Minden Pictures/age fotostock; title page: © iStock/Viorika; page 3: © iStock/RUJITOP; page 4: © iStock/FatCamera; page 5: © David Young-Wolff/PhotoEdit; page 6: © iStock/SergeyIT; page 7 (left): © Ian Redding/123RF; pages 7 (right), 13 (center bottom right): © Jupiterimages Corporation; page 8: © Chris Cheadle/All Canada Photos/Getty Images; page 9: © iStock/ivkuzmin; page 10: © Gary Meszaros/Science Source; page 12: © Martin Oeggerli/Science Source; page 13 (top left): © Eye of Science/Science Source; page 13 (top center): © Alfred Pasieka/Science Source; page 13 (top right): © David M. Phil l ips/Science Source; page 13 (bottom right): © Ch’ien Lee/Minden Pictures/age fotostock; page 14: © iStock/Whiteway; page 15: © ardea.com/Mary Evans/Paulo de Oliveira/age fotostock

Words to Know

adapt chemicals decay fungi materials

microbes nutrient cycle organisms valuable

Nature Reuses and RecyclesLevel R Leveled Book© Learning A–ZWritten by Molly Wetterschneider

All rights reserved.

www.readinga-z.com

CorrelationLEVEL R

N3030

Fountas & PinnellReading Recovery

DRA

3

Table of Contents

Recycle, Reuse, or Trash? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Nature Reuses and Recycles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Some Living Things Eat Dead Things . . . . . . 9

The Nutrient Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Nature Reuses and Recycles • Level R 4

Word WiseThe word recycle has two word parts:

re- and cycle. The word part re- means “again.” The word cycle means to circle around. Just as a bicycle wheel circles around and around, recycled materials can move from your home to a recycling plant and back to your home again.

Recycle, Reuse, or Trash?

Clink! Bonk! Plunk!

Those are the sounds of cans and bottles being tossed into the trash—or into the recycling bin . Items such as cans, bottles, and newspapers can be treated as trash, but they can be recycled instead . When you recycle something, the materials that make up the thing can be remade into a new thing .

5

Some craft projects give used cans a new purpose.

Recycling is different from reusing . When you reuse something, you keep it in the same form and do not have to break it down and remake it . When you reuse a bottle, you might fill it up with water again, but you don’t have to reuse something for its original purpose . When you reuse a soup can, you might keep pencils in it . When you reuse newspaper, you might use it to wrap birthday presents .

After you are through reusing something, you can then recycle it or reuse it again!


Caption to come. - K-Z

Nature Reuses and Recycles

People are not the only ones who reuse and recycle . Nature does this, too, with organic materials . Organic materials are what living things are made of . By reusing and recycling organic materials in nature, living things adapt and survive .

Take a tree . Every part of it can be used and reused in some way by other living things . Other plants, along with insects, birds, and other animals, have adapted to use parts of the tree to help them survive, too .

7

For instance, the original purpose of a tree’s leaves is to make food for the tree to survive . But a tree’s leaves also offer shade for sprouting plants . Birds line their nests with leaves . Sometimes squirrels reuse a bird’s nest for their own . Some insects make homes from dead leaves . That’s five uses for the same leaves!

Trees are used in other ways, too . Owls make homes in the hollows of tree trunks . Beavers cut down trees and branches to make their homes . Some animals eat bark, leaves, and fruit from trees .

Coot nest and egg Screech owl


A nurse log supports a new generation of trees in Pacific Rim National Park, British Columbia, Canada.

Trees also provide valuable help to other living things when they die . Fallen trees become “nurse logs” that provide food and a protected place for new trees and other plants to grow . Dead trees provide a home for animals . They can also provide food and building materials for other organisms .

9

The crested caracara looks like a hawk but behaves like a vulture. Here, it scavenges a dead fish.

Some Living Things Eat Dead Things

When dead things decompose, they break down, rot, or decay . Imagine what would happen if nothing decomposed: dead plants and animals would just pile up! Lucky for us, several groups make sure that doesn’t happen .

The first group that helps things decompose is made up of large scavengers . These are animals with backbones that feed on dead and decaying flesh . Large scavengers eat the dead flesh, then return the nutrients to nature through their waste . Nutrients give living things energy and help them grow .


The American burying beetle can sniff out a freshly dead animal from more than 3 kilometers (almost 2 miles) away. Once common in thirty-five U.S. states and parts of Canada, it is now an endangered species.

Many mammals scavenge . These include opossums, raccoons, dogs, cats, rodents, and skunks . Large mammals that hunt—such as hyenas, lions, and coyotes—also scavenge at times . Birds that scavenge include crows, ravens, and vultures .

A second group of decomposers does not have backbones . It includes insects such as flies, beetles, and larvae (LAR-vee) that eat dead flesh .

Earthworms eat dead leaves that fall to the ground or plants that have died and begun to rot . When earthworms eat dead plants, their bodies make waste . These bits of waste look like little blobs of soil, and in fact these blobs are rich food for plants . They contain many nutrients that plants need to develop and grow . Plants take up nutrients from the soil through their roots . The natural materials move in a circle from plants to worms and back to plants again .

11

1

1. The plant gets nutrients from the soil.2. The plant dies.3. The earthworm eats the dead plant parts.4. The earthworm makes waste that mixes with the soil.5. The waste has nutrients that feed a new plant,

and the cycle begins again.

2

4

3

5

Earthworms at Work


Microbes such as bacteria can only be seen under a microscope.

The third important group is made up of microbes, such as bacteria and some fungi . These organisms are too small to see . They feed on many dead things, from fallen trees to the guts of dead animals . These organisms break down organic materials in things that have died . This process makes chemicals that can be used by other living things .

Other fungi are big enough to see—mushrooms and toadstools, for instance— so these are not microbes . However, large or small, fungi break down dead things . Fungi are different from green plants, in part because they can’t make their own food . Instead, fungi feed on dead plants and animals, helping them decompose .

13

This fungus is found in soil that contains pigeon droppings.

Fungi spores in rye grain bread mold

Fun Facts About FungiMore than 1 million different species of

fungi live in our world. Mushrooms are some of the most visible—you might even spot some in your backyard after a big rain. Some are delicious. Some are deadly.

Some fungi can cure disease, while others can cause it. Some can glow in the dark. And while some are too small to see, a fungus known as the honey mushroom may be the largest living thing on the planet. Believed to be 2,400 years old, it covers more than 8 square kilometers (2,000 acres). fluorescent mushroom

fly agaric mushroom



The Nutrient Cycle

Decay can seem like an end, but it’s also a beginning . That’s because once something has rotted, or decomposed, the materials that made up that thing are free to make something else .

All the things we need for life on Earth are already here . They’ve been here since Earth began . Those things change their shape and appearance, of course . But for life here to continue, this nutrient cycle must keep moving . Once a living thing has died, its nutrients must cycle back for some other living thing to use .

Think of it this way: we are borrowing the things that make up our bodies . When we’re done, it’s time to give them back to the living . Decomposers help make that happen .

15

The Problem with PlasticWhat doesn’t cycle through nature? Plastic. It simply piles

up—in landfills, oceans, and just about everywhere else.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a floating landfill of garbage in Earth’s largest ocean. It’s twice the size of Texas and mostly made of plastic.

Plastic takes a very long time to break down. Even when it does, plastic doesn’t enter into the nutrient cycle. It isn’t organic. All the more reason why humans, who create it, should also recycle it!

Think of all the ways that living things use other living and dead things . You can see that nature does an awful lot of reusing and recycling . People should reuse and recycle as much as they can so they create less trash . But nature reuses or recycles every part of every living thing—it leaves no trash at all . We can learn a lot from nature .



Glossary

adapt (v.) to change to fit a new or specific situation or environment (p . 6)

chemicals (n.) substances that have specific properties and can combine with other substances to make new things (p . 12)

decay (v.) to rot or break down slowly through natural processes (p . 9)

fungi (n.) living things that grow on organic material and produce spores (p . 12)

materials (n.) matter, parts, or elements that make up objects (p . 4)

microbes (n.) microscopic organisms (p . 12)

nutrient cycle (n.)

a cyclical process between living organisms and their environment in which nutrients are used, broken down, and recycled through natural means (p . 14)

organisms (n.) living things (p . 8)

valuable (adj.) having value or worth; very important (p . 8)

Documents

Nature Reuses LEVELED BOOK R and Recycles